


Sweet Dreams

by TreacleTeacups



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Ending, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24587980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreacleTeacups/pseuds/TreacleTeacups
Summary: In which Harry's dreams are sweeter than life.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 53
Kudos: 681





	Sweet Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is just a brief one-shot I wrote based on the idea that Harry is a tacitly sensitive, touch starved sweetheart and that it really wouldn't be that hard for Voldemort to catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
> 
>  **Please note:** this story takes place within the age of consent. By this, I am referring to my local legislation and 17 years old as the Wizarding Maturity Standard. I'm not going to bother with the other red flags / warnings related to this pairing because I feel they are pretty obviously implied.

Harry snuffles against the soft cloth pressed against his nose, blinking blearily as he awoke slowly. The room is dark, too dark to see anything, and he sighs as he presses against the warm body tucked under his curled frame. A soft hand slips around his shoulder and gently slides across his arm, stroking up and down with lazy attention.

“What time is it?” Harry whispers against the chest his face is buried in, sighing as goose bumps gently rise in the path of those fingers grazing down his ribs.

“Too early,” the smooth reply came, “Go back to sleep.”

Harry sighs agreeably and closes his eyes again.

* * *

When Harry awoke again, the room was alight with the soft glow of dawn and the warm body was gone. Harry slid his hands across the sheets, the bed empty and cool.

There wasn’t even a print in the bed, like always, and he shook off the vestiges of the dream. The dream was one he had often, nearly every night now, and nothing more ever came of it. Just a warm, cozy feeling of being touched, cuddled, hugged. The contact at first had been jarring, had made Harry leap out of bed and trembling in disorientation as he shook off his sleep, no one in his bed but his own cold sheets.

It had taken a while, countless nights of waking in the arms of a stranger, but now Harry enjoys going to sleep. The person in his dreams is never seen, just a dark room and soft skin and a pleasant scent filling Harry’s nose. It’s a small secret Harry keeps to himself, a little too embarrassed to admit to his friends that his closest comforter was a figment of his own imagination.

Shaking off his morose thoughts, Harry gets out of bed and prepares himself to face the day.

* * *

Harry grit his teeth as sweat dripped down his forehead, feverishly turning over in his bed. His scar was aching something fierce, but it paled in comparison to the uncomfortable swelling of his hand.

Umbridge had been merciless, as usual, but tonight she had been especially cruel. A hundred more lines than routine had been carved into Harry’s skin, a bloody, shaking scrawl of _I must not tell lies._

Harry drifted off to sleep eventually and then he was in the impossibly dark room, laying on top of a warm chest, gently rising and falling with the slow inhale and exhale of the body pressed against his. Harry’s pain rarely comes with him here, but tonight it did, making Harry’s hand spasm.

Lithe fingers lace through Harry’s left hand and he shudders in pain, a thumb ghosting over of the split skin.

“When did this start?” He asks, toneless.

“A while ago,” Harry replies, pressing his nose into the join of his companion’s chest and arm. He’s too tired to think and its safe here, always safe.

“Why do you let them?” He whispers, smoother than warm honey.

“Because I don’t know how to stop it,” Harry replies, muffled. He inhales softly, enjoying the scent of warmth and skin. Harry imagines this is what sunlight smells like.

“Would you let me help you?” He asks coyly, a hand winding into Harry’s birds nest hair and soothing the scalp with gentle nails.

“There’s nothing anyone can do,” Harry replies and then he’s listless, a boat pulled out with the tide, lost to sleep before he can hear the reply.

* * *

Harry lets the world wash over him and he’s angry, _so angry_ , when he’s awake. There are battles to be fought and blond ferrets to be made a fool of and Umbridges to be taunted. And then Harry makes the biggest mistake of his life – he mistakes a dream for reality and his godfather is dead, _gone missing dead,_ and there’s not even a body to bury and it’s all Harry’s fault, all Harry’s fault that his friends are maimed and Sirius is _gone_ and there’s nothing anyone can do.

* * *

The soft dreams are replaced with nightmares and Harry doesn’t see his companion for a long time. So long that Harry wonders if it had ever even happened at all.

It’s not until he’s safely back at Grimmauld Place that he falls into bed and his friend is back, a warm frame against Harry’s back and arms wrapping around his waist and Harry sighing in bone-deep relief.

“I’ve missed you,” Harry says to his friend, pressing the back of his head into the warm shoulder and nosing his friend’s neck gently, inhaling deeply. The scent brings back memories of warmth, safety, comfort, love.

“I’ve missed you, too,” He replies, words warming the nape of Harry’s neck. “Where did you go?”

“To hell,” Harry states with raw honestly.

* * *

The school year is difficult, so very difficult, and Harry is crying by the time he bodily carries Dumbledore back to Hogwarts. Then Dumbledore is falling off the edge of oblivion, Draco Malfoy crying harder than Harry, and the entire world blossoms into abrupt chaos.

* * *

“It’s getting harder to wake up,” Harry admits one night. It’s a rare time when his companion is draped over Harry and Harry enjoys the weight, back pressing into the bed and chest crushed against a warm frame, a face pressed into the join of his neck and collarbone.

“I wonder why you do, then,” He replies, breath humid against Harry’s neck.

Harry hums, closing his eyes. He wonders why, too. Harry laces their fingers together and slips back into sleep.

* * *

In the time which should have been Harry’s seventh year is the wildest one yet, facing down Death Eaters and Umbridge and dragons and all kinds of nefarious madness.

The night before the final battle, in the cooling eve of salty sea air, Harry turns to his companion and presses lips against the warm skin of his neck. The room is dark, as always, and His arms wrap around Harry’s waist tightly.

“That felt like goodbye,” He says, strained.

“It is,” Harry answers, not letting himself stay for a moment longer and pulling himself out of his dream.

* * *

Harry dies at Voldemort’s feet and the very last thing he expects is to wake up in a piercing white wonderland, Dumbledore merrily guiding him along.

Harry barely has a moment to consider what Dumbledore is saying, then, because he sees something that surprises him to his core.

Sitting on a train bench to nowhere is Tom Riddle, Jr. The man is perhaps thirty, though Harry knows wizarding age is frightfully hard to tell, and his legs are crossed. Lithe hands are folded over his knee and he is watching Harry with consideration, head tilted to the side. He is across the train tracks from Harry, patiently waiting his turn.

It is the first time that Harry has stared at Tom Riddle without feeling an ounce of fear and, for the first time, it registers to him how _beautiful_ he is. How composed and put together. Harry faintly registers that Dumbledore is still talking, but all he can do is look at Tom Riddle’s grey eyes. Harry looks and looks and _looks,_ and yet can’t get enough. He wants to stare at Tom Riddle for a hundred years.

Then Dumbledore is speaking about a pitiful baby, gesturing towards Tom Riddle. Harry looks at Dumbledore, then looks back at Tom Riddle.

Dumbledore is clearly seeing something else than what Harry is. Perhaps they are both seeing what they want to see.

Harry hops off the station ledge, onto the tracks, and ignores Dumbledore’s words. Harry has spent nearly seven years listening to Dumbledore. Now, he wants to listen to Tom Riddle.

Tom Riddle watches Harry curiously as the young man lifts himself up the other side of the tracks and back onto the station, watches as Harry straightens himself and strides toward the patient Dark Lord.

“Hello,” Harry says, slipping his hands into his pocket jeans. He rocks back on his heels, wondering if Tom Riddle is real, if he can speak.

“Hello, Harry Potter,” Tom Riddle replies and Harry feels his breath catch in his throat. He knows this voice, knows the clipped accent and the softened syllables and the tempo like a favourite song burned into his memory.

“You’re my dream,” Harry says, blinking.

“I’ve never been called someone’s dream before, but I find it rather flattering,” Tom Riddle replies, eyes glittering mischievously.

“If I don’t wake up this time, will you stay with me?” Harry asks, sidestepping Tom Riddle’s comment.

“I don’t think so,” Tom Riddle says, considering.

“Would you come with me?” Harry then asks, feeling a small welling of panic in his stomach. He’s not ready to let go of this yet.

“Harry,” Dumbledore is then saying, tone somehow admonishing and astonished, all at once.

“I think I’d like that very much,” Tom Riddle replies, a smirk stealing across his features.

Harry holds out his hand. Fingers that he knows by touch alone – can recognize with his eyes closed and senses shut off – lace through his, Tom Riddle pulled to his feet.

“Let’s go home, hm?” Tom Riddle is whispering against Harry’s face, check pressed against the side of Harry’s face.

“Please,” Harry says, burying his face in Tom Riddle’s shoulder.

* * *

Harry wakes with his face pressed into a warm chest, fingers stroking down the tense line of his spine. He snuffles against the chest and sighs in relief, arm tightening across the chest he’s plastered against.

“How does it feel, to see me when you wake rather than when you go to sleep?” Tom asks, burying a hand in Harry’s hair and tugging gently.

“Like bliss,” Harry replies, and it does. Bliss. Touch. Love.

Tom releases a soft laugh, air pressing out of his chest and dipping Harry’s head. A nail winds under Harry’s chin and then his neck is bowed as his head is guided upward, to look at Tom Riddle’s pleased expression.

“You’re perfect,” Tom is whispering, peppering gentle kisses against Harry’s sleepy, parted mouth. “I’m going to eat you up.”

Harry melts into the touch, somehow more boneless than before, and he smiles.


End file.
